Classroom time is limited, so the priority question in teaching pronunciation is to find an effective sequence of presentation. This article recounts one teacher's path to learning about different approaches to teaching English rhythm and why it is important. For many years, a common way of distinguishing languages has been based on the assumption…

Stress is an integral part of conveying meaning in English at not only the level of the word but also the phrase and rhetoric where it is exploited in English in literature, humor, advertising, and more. Simultaneously, stress marks language variation in regional, generational, and ethnic dialects. Thus, stress bears a great functional load and…

This article provides critical student perspectives on a set of instructor-created materials in which students ultimately delivered a spoken anecdote in a class presentation. The research was conducted qualitatively through the lens of narrative inquiry. Data were gathered from six participants, all undergraduate English majors at a Japanese…

This article addresses the issue of teaching pronunciation in English as a second language (ESL) classes by specifically looking at the impact of teaching lexical stress rules and tendencies on learners' stress placement performance. Sixteen rules in the form of interactive worksheets were taught in three ESL classes at pre-intermediate,…

High-stakes tasks may prevent language learners from performing successfully due to factors of "communicative stress" (Skehan, 1996, p. 52). Little research, however, has directly examined phonological patterns in learners' performances on low-stakes, medium-stakes, and high-stakes classroom tasks. The current study investigated the oral…